South Florida's slow economic recovery

When Sean Snaith, one of Florida’s most quoted economists, describes the current state of the recovery, he imagines a car ready to hit the gas but stuck in traffic.

“We’re still on the ramp,’’ said Snaith, who teaches economics at the University of Central Florida. “We’re trying to merge onto the interstate, where we can travel at a faster speed.”

It’s a popular analogy, but what exactly is the delay on the road to recovery? To answer that question, we turned South Florida’s economy into an actual highway, then clocked the speed of as many vehicles as we could.

Turns out, we’re moving along at 47 mph, a bit faster than last year but still stuck in a slow lane.

More on that calculation later, but first a word from the president of U.S. Century Bank.

“I think people are expecting things to improve, but slowly. Nobody is saying, ‘Ok, it’s over and we’re ready to roll,’’’ said Octavio Hernandez, who has led U.S. Century since it started in 2002. “There is movement in the right direction.’’

That description fits the traffic pattern on our Economic Superhighway, our latest effort to illustrate South Florida’s recovery from the Great Recession.